Rainbow Glow
by xElsax
Summary: Flirting in the middle of a terrorist raid probably isn't wise, but Ash is intrigued by the new cute member of the team who hides behind a mask, goes by the alias IQ, and won't stop looking at the screen attached to her arm. #AshQ


"So what do you look like behind that mask?"

The girl moved her bright blue eyes, bared through the circular opening of the black ski mask covering her face, from the metal floor that was vibrating beneath her purple running shoes, and up at a girl sitting across diagonally, where the voice was presumably coming from. The suspect's head was resting against the wall of the truck and facing forward and covered by a black baseball hat with white threads sewn on the front in the shape of 'FBI'. Behind her blonde hair, that covered her face and the fabric concealing it, her eyebrows lowered in defense. She tried to pierce a hole in the the protective shadowed glass of the threat by shooting icicles out of her retinas, but when they failed to shatter them, the corner of the sunglass girl's mouth lifted slightly, confirming the auditory source. She continued to look straight ahead. After staring at her unmoving head, the masked girl looked down at the grenade launcher she was holding in her lap, and then up at her auburn hair draped over her shoulder and intertwining in and out in the form of a double helix.

The trucked stopped abruptly and the momentum rocked everyone inside. A man at the back started speaking. "We have new intel. The hostage is located on the second floor. You know what to do."

The doors open and the cold air of the night flooded in. She looked up at the girl again, who was still smirking beneath her hat and behind her glasses, and then jumped out of the truck. She ran ahead while the rest of the team followed. The chill brushed against her uncovered skin as she approached the objective. She stopped suddenly as if sensing something and pointed her rifle with a teal and white circular design into the sky and fired a single round through the glass of a black dome mounted on a white pole. She didn't like people staring at her.

She continued running until she reached the wall of the briefed house. As she took out her grappling hook, the girl with the shades ran up next to her. "You ready?" she asked, looking up at the roof. Then she turned and faced her.

She stared back at her, feeling vulnerable that only her eyes were exposed and her emotions could be read, she pushed down the protective shield on the top of her helmet in front of her face. She gave a sharp and quick nod. She tossed the hook up onto the roof and pulled the rope until it caught, and then started to rappel up the side. She reached a window covered by a steel plate and she lifted her left arm and pulled up the monitor attached to it. After activating the scanner white circles began to pulsate on the blue screen. "This room," she whispered.

The girl scaling the wall next to her began to ready her weapon, and gestured her hand to lower. She fired the weapon and it placed a drilled bomb into the metal. Now suspended beneath the window, the girl inside the helmet squinted her eyes as she prepared hers- An instantaneous and immediately evaporating flash of orange, followed by raining shards of metal that tapped against the top of her helmet. She pulled her head up from its lowered position and the window covered by metal was now open and lit.

"Shit! Over there!" The sound of screaming voices shot out the window pursued by automatic rattling.

The screaming came to an end when a loud kick sound, which rang and echoed through the night sky, was shot through the newly opened window from the balcony of a treehouse by the teammate carrying a sniper rifle. After a brief moment of silence the screaming multiplied along with the bullets and glass spraying out of the windows.

The girl, with the purple shoes, planted against the side of the house ripped open the velcro pocket on the front of her bulletproof vest and slipped out a metal tube. "Stun grenade," her voice traveled to the earpieces of the other teammates preparing their weapons. She slid her finger into the ring and pulled the pin out of the top of the tube and threw the grenade in the window.

The girl next to her, higher up the wall, pushed her sunglasses closer to her face. When the white light saturated the room, and the voices started blindly screaming, the girl bashed the wooden plank barricading the window using the end of her assault rifle and three compartmentalized strobes of light and bursts of banging emitted from the muzzle, followed by three varying thuds. Afterwards the bushes rustled as the shells traveled to the ground against the now still and settling atmosphere.

The girl with the scanner around her wrist climbed and looked through the window. "Room's clear." She swung from the rope and into the house, and ran up to the hostage sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. She took the duct tape off her mouth. "Everything's going to be okay."

The wall in front of them exploded and wood shards flew forward and the white dust from the dry wall filled the room and her lungs, causing her body to reject it. Before she could lift her rifle and squeeze the trigger, the teal wallpaper was scattered with holes and splashed with red next to the still smoking giant burnt hole and a man wearing a mask fell to the ground in the newly created entryway.

After processing what had just happened and inhaling a mouthful of air, she took the hostage's hand and guided her to the window, stepping over a body. She attached the rope to her harness. "Hold onto me tight," she said, then they descended down the side of the house. "I have the hostage, we're heading back."

"Doing a sweep for hostiles," a voice in her ear said as two members of the team on the ground burst through the front door with a giant hammer.

In the truck, the girl, with the German flag patch on the shoulder sleeve of her grey hooded sweatshirt, took off her helmet and tried to console the sobbing rescued victim. "Everything's going to be okay," she told her again. She put her hand on her shoulder. Her body was shaking and water was dripping off her chin. She wasn't sure what to say. Psychology wasn't her field of study.

"The house is clear."

"They're all gone now. It's over." The victim was breathing in short and stuttered fits. Unsure what to do, she took off her vest, and hugged the victim, while letting her cry into her shoulder.

* * *

An ambulance came and the victim was put in the care of a more qualified person.

The girl looked down at her purple shoes embedded with beads of blood as she jabbed her elbow on her knee and propped up her head, burying her fingers in her hair, trying to mend her mind.

"How are you feeling?" the voice asked.

She jolted up. Her ears were still ringing from the blast. It was the the girl with the glasses. She began to sit down across from her. She planted her boots on the ground that were a chestnut color like her hair. She leaned forward on her arms.

"I'm fine," she replied, sitting back up.

"Hey you're finally talking to me," she smiled.

She looked at the lenses blocking her eyes, and remembered how bare she was. She tilted her head down and put her hand back in her hair. "You wear those even at night?"

"Oh, it's just a habit." She grabbed the side of the frame and pulled them off her face. "So what's your name? I know they all call you IQ."

IQ looked up and saw the girl for the first time. Her eyes were hazel and they radiated a warm and robust glow as they looked back into hers, evoking from them a thaw and steam of cool and cobalt snow. After pulling herself from the grip of her gaze, she looked over and down. "Hey. **_Ash._** Thanks, for, you know."

Ash chuckled. "Of course. And you can call me Eliza."

IQ looked at Eliza who took her hat off and ruffled her hair with her fingers, then looked at the glove on her hand and tugged the velcro strap and slipped it off. As IQ watched she noticed her pulse change against her control and she reached up to pull down her protective shield but it wasn't there. She then quickly touched her cheek and noticed her black fabric wasn't covering her face.

"You're very pretty."

IQ did not like the feeling of heat surging to her face. She stood up.

"Hey, wait. Where are you going?"

"I...I..." The sounds were falling out of her mouth, "Have to leave." She jumped out of the truck and disappeared.

Ash sat in the empty steel truck and sighed. She tossed her glove against the wall and it thumped, fell, and flopped against the space IQ had just left.

* * *

 _A/N: If anyone's interested in this I'd love to hear your thoughts! Also, I never thought I'd be the person writing a fanfic about a first person shooter, but here I am.  
_

 _Feb. 03 update: I noticed in the 2.0 update the commander voice guy you hear over the game said "you know what to do." This line is new. (I've sunk at least 100 hours into this game, so the sounds are burned into my mind.) When I wrote this back in December of last year, I kind of just made up a line that was different than the game to better fit the story. It could just be a coincidence. After all, that is a pretty common line. Or maybe he was saying it the entire time and it was buried in my subconscious. But anyways it would be so incredibly cool if someone from Ubisoft was reading this dumb fanfiction! At the very least, they do in my dreams. :') *You can stop worrying about grenades now.* Jäger's hushed voice caressed me to a gentle slumber._

 _Leave a comment letting me know I'm crazy!_

 _Another chapter is being fortified!_

 _Feb. 04 update: So it turns out I was indeed crazy. I was playing the game late last night after a long 14 hour day. I thought I heard the familiar phrase, and got overly excited by the possibility of appreciation and acknowledgement from an official source that I scurried over here to share my delirious enthusiasm. (How embarrassing.) Though sleep was pleasant with the ADS planted above my head like a dreamcatcher. (Dream shooter.)_

 _I'll use my tears to fuel the creation of the next chapter. :')_

 _Feb. 07 update (the updates never end!): So during the defuser mode, when you're defending and the enemy locates the bomb during the preparation phase, the guy says "OPFOR has located a bomb. You know what to do." I don't think this is new._ _But this is ridiculous anyways I've written more words about this than the actual story! Now I don't know what's canon, what's a dream, and what's fan fiction! My mind has been taken hostage!_


End file.
